Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Mount Kilauea in Hawaii is rising. Overlook crater, an elliptical crater, has been rumbling for quite some time, but in the past few days she's really grown uneasy, lava rising some 26 feet in the past 72 hours. That puts the flow only 13 feet from the volcanoes rim and once it goes over....the lava tumbles down the slopes. Nothing really dramatic, but something awful cool!

Eventually it might work its way to the sea (though I don't think so, this is pretty high up), but if it does, it will look wicked smart!

The Horned God's Acre is the Second Level of the First Ward of Aufstrag. It was held by the Nebians in the tower's day of glory, but those days are long past and it is not just another part of hell on Aihrde.

A foul stench permeates the whole of the Acre, except for the tower of Kara Nuel. It is the stench of old death, of blood and rot, of things left unburied that should have been entombed beneath earth and stone. The walls are stained with the nightmares of the dying, for all that dies here, dies cruelly. There is no mercy in hell and there is less in the Acre.

Tomorrow, the 30th of April, Messenger's fuel cells run dry and she'll begin her very rapid descent toward Mercury. The probe has been exploring our near-sun neighbor for close on to a decade, but her journey now comes to an end. She's been pumping info to us since 2011 when she went into orbit around Mercury (she launched in 2004).

Its kind of a sad fate really. This robotic probe sent from Earth to explore new worlds has been lighting up the sky of Mercury for several years, but it ends in a heap of wreckage on the planet's surface. Her heat shields destroyed she'll probably burn up and slowly disintegrate.

It seems that some more noble doom should be given to such vessels. Maybe a trajectory that ends in the Sun.

How cool would that be? To merge with the star that sits at the center of all we do and are?

Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.

People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes.

Difficulties have been recognized in adequately defining synesthesia: Many different phenomena have been included in the term synesthesia ("union of the senses"), and in many cases the terminology seems to be inaccurate. A more accurate term may be ideasthesia.

In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia or color-graphemic synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored. In spatial-sequence, or number form synesthesia, numbers, months of the year, and/or days of the week elicit precise locations in space (for example, 1980 may be "farther away" than 1990), or may appear as a three-dimensional map (clockwise or counterclockwise).

Only a fraction of types of synesthesia have been evaluated by scientific research. Awareness of synesthetic perceptions varies from person to person.

Although synesthesia was the topic of intensive scientific investigation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was largely abandoned by scientific research in the mid-20th century. Psychological research has demonstrated that synesthetic experiences can have measurable behavioral consequences, and functional neuroimaging studies have identified differences in patterns of brain activation. Many find that synesthesia aids the creative process. Psychologists and neuroscientists study synesthesia not only for its inherent appeal, but also for the insights it may give into cognitive and perceptual processes that occur in synesthetes and non-synesthetes alike.

How someone with synesthesia might perceive (not "see") certain letters
and numbers. Synesthetes see characters just as others do (in whichever
color actually displayed), yet simultaneously perceive colors as
associated to each one.

This Order consists of human and elven druids, rangers, and others dedicated to the preservation and protection of the Great Oak in the Eldwood. There, the Great Oak towers over the forest, an offspring of the Earhtaut. The Oak is ageless, and worshiped as a god by many in the forest. It speaks only to those it deems worthy, and usually only to the Val Tulmiph Daladon.

The Order is very small, numbering in the hundreds only. Though most of them live in the Eldwood, they have adherents in forests all across the Lands of Ursal, keeping a watch on magical glades. These include the Detmold, where the Winter Roses bloom, and the Paladin’s Grove, where the Silver Elms grow. They have a strong presence in the Gelderland as well. They are very secretive, possessing no allegiances to any prince. They are closely associated with the Watchers in the Wood of the Darkenfold, and are loosely aligned with the wood elves of King Nigold.

The Order’s houses are called Woodholes, the chief of witch stands in the Eldwood. They are usually built in hidden, defensible glades where there is a source of fresh water.

Members of the Order carry wooden staves or wands made from fallen branches of the Great Oak. All members of the Order gain the following abilities, usable once per day: know direction, speak with animals, and speak with plants.

In taxonomy, a group is said to be paraphyletic if it consists of all the descendants of the last common ancestor of the group's members minus a small number of monophyletic groups of descendants, typically just one or two such groups. Such a group is said to be paraphyletic with respect to the excluded groups. The term is commonly used in phylogenetics (a subfield of biology) and in linguistics.

For example, the group of reptiles, as traditionally defined, is paraphyletic with respect to the mammals and birds: it contains the last common ancestor of the reptiles—including the extant reptiles as well as the extinct mammal-like reptiles—along with all descendants of that ancestor except for mammals and birds. Other commonly recognized paraphyletic groups include fish and lizards.

Monday, April 27, 2015

I'm not sure why, when I think about cavemen, that the thought of it appeals to me so . . . perhaps its because I don't actually live in a cave and can idolize the life . . . but whenever I picture them hunched over their various tasks, the very thought of it, comforts me. I think the simple thought of being able to step inside a cave, and the wind, the rain, the cold and heat, are all immediately blocked, plays its hand on my mind. A small fire, at the end of a brutal day, built inside the cave, to warm the feet and cook the food. Does it get any better?

Somewhere, long ago, these people lived out their lives without much concern about what was coming or what was past. They buried their dead in shallow graves, they raised their young ones. And life went on.

In the world of Aihrde the ocean bottoms are referred to as 'The Deep Quiet." Those who slip beneath the waves of the Dulzine Ocean, the Amber Sea or any of the manifold bodies of water are said to have "gone to the Deep Quiet."

When Unklar lifted Aufstrag from the ruin of the ancient city of Al Liosh he did so in order to build a fortress for himself, for in those early days of his reign, he was plagued by doubt, and feared the return of the Val Eahrakun (the gods) and that they might smite him for his sudden assumption of the world. But too, Aufstrag was built as a temple, to house those who paid him homage and who would serve him in all his thoughts. These were his most devoted; those who bent to his will without question and served him as priests and champions. He set them above all others in his realm and gave them both the tasks of service to his worship and the defense of Aufstrag.

Thus it was that the second level of that dread domain was given over to them, the priests. It served to house them, and as a bastion from which they could rule all that passed through Aufstrag, to and from, the Citadel on high. A high priestess was set to lord over them. Chosen from the ranks of the Aenochian Lords, the priestess was given the name Nectanebo. Thus they were called ever after, both in name and title. So that the first to grace Aufstrag they called Nectanebo II. After she fell to the Aenochian Rebellion, Nectanebo III ruled and so on through the centuries.

After its completion, Unklar ordered Aufstrag and he granted the second level, amongst others, to Nectanebo to rule. There she set her the lesser ranks of her priests, giving the quarters to live in and instructing them to build temples for the worship of Unklar, cells for the punishment of those who defied him, rooms for contemplation, meeting halls for the priests to gather for instruction and all the many other and varied rooms necessary for the maintenance of the rank and file of the priesthood. Too, rooms were given to the Crna Ruk, those assassins in Unklar's employ, the Ungern, his must trusted soldiery, and wizards of the Paths of Umbra. All those represented the lesser minions and peopled the Acre.

Toxicodendron radicans, commonly known as poison ivy (older synonyms are Rhus toxicodendron and Rhus radicans), is a poisonous North American and Asian flowering plant that is well known for causing an itching, irritating, and sometimes painful rash in most people who touch it, caused by urushiol, a clear liquid compound in the sap of the plant. Urushiol, however, is not a defensive measure; it helps the plant to retain water. It is variable in its appearance and habit, and despite its common name it is not a true ivy (Hedera). T. radicans is commonly eaten by many animals, and the seeds are consumed by birds, but poison ivy is most often thought of as an unwelcome weed.

I can attest to the evil that is poison ivy. But this poison ivy is even worse...

Friday, April 24, 2015

As with most television, I'm a late comer to this show. Started watching it a few months ago, and just wrapped it up a few days ago. I'm not sure what I expected when I got into it, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Generally I don't go in for criminals who are pitched as the main guys...as criminals, well, they aren't heroes...but I took the dive with Breaking Bad. I didn't regret it. The show is so well shot, and the transformation of the main character Walter White was nothing short of genius, as its both sudden and gradual. The tale's redemption actually lies in the conflict with Jessie Pinkman, White's partner. He moves through the haze of the tale's action with both stunned silence and naive acquiescence.

The actors need a shout out here, because they take the raw text of what is clearly a very good story and bring it to life. At no part of the show did I step out and say, oh yeah, this is a tv show. They kept me in the moment the whole time.

The Asylum is one of the largest thief and assassin guilds in the lands. It is based in Avignon, and its name also refers to the district of that city which is its base of operations. The Asylum has its hands in all of Avignon’s affairs. It has spread to the lands north, in the Hanse City states, the towns of Most and Ossford in the Gottland, as well as south to Frieberg, and even in the far east in New Aenoch.

Gaining membership in the Asylum takes some time. Prospective members generally join one of the many sub-guilds to prove their loyalty and worth to the organization. Those who fail and murdered, those who succeed are given the passwords and locales of the meeting houses, all kept secret.

The first thought that comes to mind when I think about wormholes is how cool a word that actually is, "wormhole." So common and ordinary, but in context, its astounding. I'm not sure which of the two, Einstein or Rosen, came up with the name, but kudos to them.

I'm not going to pretend to know the physics behind it, but the idea, as proposed by the two notable physicists, is that the theory of general relativity predicts these existence of these bridges between points in space and time. I'm guessing it has something to do with gravity and the pull on space by large objects. But in any respect, the wormhole, doesn't last long, collapsing in on themselves quickly. And I'd hazard a guess that they would probably be a pretty rough place to set up a juice bar.

But the idea is out there. Here's a little vid for your enjoyment. Taken from an article on space.com